Far Removed, We Remember
by L56895
Summary: Futurefic, angst. The night brings back painful memories of her childhood. KurtxJane


She seemed to come to at midnight, all at once she jolted back down to earth- to his arms- and her crying subsided, to be replaced by heavy laboured breaths. Still he rocked her, like he had done for what felt like an eternity but was likely closer to an hour, kissed her temples and whispered her name into her hair as she pressed her palms to his chest. He knew his heart would be still be pounding, his veins still pumped from the effort of restraining her arms and legs as she kicked and screamed against him, not like a wild animal but like the frightened child she had been in those moments. He had caught glimpses of clarity as she mumbled and cried against him, knew she had remembered something, something that was likely worse than anything they had previously hashed out together, and he held her gently now.

When she withdrew her hands from his chest he watched her bring them up to look at the red marks on her wrists. It had been his idea, the bile rose in his throat, something to spice up their already decent sex life. Something that he thought would have felt good for both of them, an exercise in trust to have her prone and tied on the bed for him to pleasure, until her eyes glazed and a wild look of panic took over her face. His ministrations of the soft skin of her thighs interrupted by a guttural scream and the painful thud of her heel hitting his back.

She had confided in him some weeks ago that snippets of her early life had started to come back to her. Without the pressure of being Taylor Shaw, without his desire for her to recover memories they thought they shared but she had not lived, her mind seemed free to heal. Nothing substantial, she assured both him and Borden, but enough to catch glimpses into a childhood that had made treason seem attractive. What she had confided had made him feel sick, had made him hold her tighter at night but had seemed- to her- so far removed from her new self, from the 'Jane' she had created, that she had been able to detach herself from it.

But the pressure of his tie encircling her wrists on the bed, the scratch of his beard on her breasts and thighs, and suddenly her moans of pleasure had turned to hitching breaths and moans of 'No, no, no' and he was scrabbling against the headboard to undo his knots, to deflect the blows to his head and back as she screamed and flailed. She was wild, and not in the same way he had seen when she first joined them in the field. There was no skill in the way she lashed out, just a primal need to escape, to survive him. Now she was curled in his lap, pinned into an embrace with his mouth against her hot cheeks.

'I'm sorry,' she said finally, between deep breaths. He brought his hand up from where it had rested on her back, right on the tattoo of his name, and cupped the back of her head to support it. 'I'm so sorry, I don't know what happened.'

'No, don't apologise,' his voice came out hoarse and deep, more primitive than he meant it to. He wished he could be softer for her, more like Borden with his way of making everything seem fixable, but instead he gripped her clumsily and his tongue felt numb with unformed words. He kissed her forehead and let out a deep breath against her skin, 'Don't ever feel like you need to apologise to me for something you remember.'

When he pulled away she was looking at him again, a different kind of fear on her face. He reached up gently to touch the corner of his eye and he felt a slight sting at the pressure of her fingertips.

'How bad is it?' he laughed, despite himself, and pressed his forehead to hers.

'I scratched you,' she said simply, her breath a whisper against his skin. He laughed again, softly, bitterly, and tipped his chin to kiss her.

'I'll come up with some excuse for the team. Tell them you opened a door on me while you were trying to cook,' he tried humour, hoping it would settle, but her breathe hitched again.

'I want you to talk to Dr Borden,' she drew her head back to look at him, her eyes welling up again, 'I need you to talk to him.'

'You're sure?'

'I need you to tell him, tell him about tonight, because I need to be able to talk to him and I can't do that unless he asks me. I can't be the one to bring it up.'

He nodded, understanding because he knew he would be the same. How could she bring up memories from a life that was so far removed from what she knew now? He knew from their conversations after her sessions with Dr Borden that it was always the same process; he questions, she opens up. Never volunteering anything unprompted. He knew from his own sessions with the Doctor that the man had a talent for probing in a way that encouraged openness, that his was a gentle use of what he already knew to dig deeper into his patient's minds. Tomorrow he would continue on his usual trend of probing into her recent past, the past relevant to their investigation on Orion, never assuming that her mind had opened up further than they ever thought possible.

'I'll tell him,' he said eventually, his voice finally soft as the moment required, 'I'll tell him you need him.'

She kissed him instead of thanking him and for that he was grateful. He couldn't bare her gratitude for the smallest of gestures that did barely anything to ease her pain.

He watched her eyelids flutter closed and her head droop slightly against him just as he became aware of a dull ache in his lower back. She shifted in his lap as he shuffled back against the headboard and released her slightly. She uncurled, lithe and still naked in his lap, and he stirred as her bare skin brushed against his. As the back lines of her tattoos became animated in front of his, pictures come to life as the muscles underneath rippled, he leaned back and concentrated on his breathing, willing some self-control at the sight of her fully naked in front of him. She was exposed, raw and vulnerable in that moment and he would not take that opportunity to have her in her weakest moments.

'Can I tell you? What I remembered?' she said suddenly, sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap. He couldn't see her face but her voice was shaky, afraid. He placed a hand on her back.

'Tell me,' he growled softly, his voice returning to that low rumble that he imagined was not comforting to her, but was at least familiar.

And so she shared with him the secrets of the dark crevices of her mind. The memories of dirty children in beds, of growing older and used to the hands of strange men and things that she did not understand. Her memory had been fleeting, she said, and in the moment of her panic it had been more of a feeling than a picture. Her body reacting to a situation it found familiar, frightening, while her mind shut down. As she described the depths of the fear she felt when his hands had roamed her, while she was helpless beneath him, he felt a spark of resentment that he quickly quelled by wrapped his arms around her from behind. This was not his battle, not his injustice to rage over. His anger should be in support of her, he knew, not in reaction to having a fantasy foiled.

When she was spent of words, when she drifted off in to silence and rested back against his chest, he wrapped his arms back around her and kissed the curve of her neck and shoulders. They stayed that way in silence, listening to the sounds of one another's breathing and the occasional roar of a car outside the window. Eventually his eyes wandered to the illuminated clock next to the bed and he sighed, shifting on the bed to reach under her and roll them both on to their backs.

'We should sleep, it's late,' he whispered into her hair. He was greeted with silence, her words drained from her, but she pulled his arms tighter around her in response. Almost immediately he felt the energy drain from him and he sunk into the mattress, his body exhausted, his mind still going over the images he now has of her childhood. She seems smaller in his arms at night than she ever does in the field, and now he can only imagine her smaller, more alone and scared than he has ever felt in his life. It makes him regret, bitterly, the way he so desperately wanted her to be Taylor in the beginning. The way he helped to erase her own identity for so long, never even considering that she might have pain separate to his own. Over the years he'd seen enough of child trafficking cases to know, deep down, what her early life would have been like. The pieces of the puzzle were fitting in a way that none of them liked, but it was these nights, these desperate attempts to navigate a new relationship fraught with questions and pain, that it became apparent how desperately affected she was.

The sounds of her breaths, laden with sleep, soothed him slightly and he rested his head on the pillow beside hers. Grateful that she was still able to rest in his arms, he slept.


End file.
